Letter of Transmittal.           xxix





        under which he had promised to settle this amount on his wife Mary, Mrs.
        Perry's daughter, when they should be married. She asserts that the estate
        is so encumbered with the claims of creditors that there will be nothing for the
        widow unless the court now sets aside the two thousand pounds. At the Decem
        ber session, the bond, dated 1649 and attested by Sir Anthony Bateman, Knight,
        Lord Mayor of London, was filed in court, as evidence, and an execution for
        this amount issued against the estate (pages 291-294, 319-32 1). An inventory
        of Bateman's estate, filed a short time later, presents interesting details as to
        the property owned by a prosperous planter of the period. The reversionary
        interest in Resurrection Manor, Bateman's plantation, is given as valued at
        65,000 pounds of tobacco. The total value of the estate, including land, is given
        as 139,971 pounds of tobacco (pages 363-366).
          Philip Holleger on behalf of his wife, Mary, the only surviving child of
        Jeremiah Hasling of South River, Anne Arundel County, deceased, petitioned
        the court to set aside a reputed will of Hasling made in favor of a certain James
        Southward, which Holleger denied was signed by Hasling. Evidence was pro
        duced which showed that Hasling was very ill at the time that the will was sup
        posed to have been made by him, and that there was something very dubious
        about the circumstances surrounding the making and the signing of the will;
        and that furthermore the only witness to the will itself was a certain Anthony
        Dimondidier, a beneficiary under it. The court at its October, 1665, session
        declared the will to be invalid, put Mrs. Holleger in possession of the land, and
        ordered Southward to file an account promptly of his acts as administrator.
        Holleger, who appears to have settled in Maryland in 1663, was a resident of
        that part of Baltimore County which is now Cecil County (pages 441-443, 493-
        494, 564).
          At the October, 1665, session of the court Thomas Clarke of Resurrection
        Manor, Calvert County, was indicted for shooting a horse which belonged to
        Cuthbert Fenwick of St. Clement's Manor in the same County. Clarke had
        been annoyed by Fenwick's horses jumping the fences into his fields, and
        emptied the contents of a gun loaded with swan shot into a mare, which died
        a few hours later. Fenwick was awarded damages by the court and Clarke
        was required to give bond for his good behavior in the future (pages 503-507).
          The status of the property rights of aliens was brought out in a case before
        the court at its January, 1666, session. The Attorney-General filed an informa
        tion that Francis Martin, an unnaturalized alien, had recently died, leaving a
        freehold of 200 acres which under the law reverted to the Lord Proprietary.
        The record breaks off before the decision was rendered (page 563). The owner
        ship of the land involved had come before the court in another form, Janu
        ary 21, 1663, when Elinor, the widow of Francis Martin, had brought suit
        against her daughter-in-law Patience Martin, claiming her dower rights, but
        the question of alien ownership had not been mentioned at this time (page 30).
          The duties of a plantation overseer were brought out in detail in au employ
        ment contract exhibited before the court at its December, 1664, session, when
        John Abington sued his overseer John Salisbury for neglect of his duties as